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Topic: How Do I Load Maps On My GPS Unit? (Read 139016 times)

Ibycus has not posted here; OZ has included his mapsets as a courtesy.He does post in the Canada section of forums.groundspeak.com. Many posters there use his Canada Topo mapset and could better answer specific question about it.

If this is the wrong thread to post this, I'm sorry. Feel free to have a mod move it.

I loaded City Navigator on my Oregon 450 and everything worked. I then downloaded and installed My Trails & an Illinois topo from here. Once I installed these on my unit, CN has "disappeared" from the unit under where I enable/disable the maps at.

Will reloading CN onto the unit fix this or am I starting a vicious circle because I need to rename a file or something?

If you loaded CN from the DVD and did not change the gmapsupp.img file name to another .img file name (which MapSource and BaseCamp uses when they send data to the GPSr), then you have overwritten any existing gmapsupp.img file on the GPSr or micro memory card.

Correct. That is the easy way to do it on the newer units which support such filenames.

Otherwise, you select some or all quads/tiles from one mapset, then do the same for any/all additional mapsets, finally sending them all to the GPSr/micro memory card in a single gmapsupp.img file. That is the only way to put more than one mapset on the older GPSr units.The downside is that the gmapsupp.img file needs to be rebuilt every time you want to add/change/delete a quad or mapset.

Otherwise, you select some or all quads/tiles from one mapset, then do the same for any/all additional mapsets, finally sending them all to the GPSr/micro memory card in a single gmapsupp.img file.

Interestingly, this does not work correctly on some of the newest models. I tried it on the Nuvi 3790, and the whole bundle of maps could only be turned on/off as a group. In other words, I could not enable/disable individual maps inside the gmapsupp.img container.

Not sure about the Oregon because I've never tried sending it a bundle in one file.

If I send a gmapsupp.img with 6 or 8 map sections to my OR300, and rename it mymap5.img and I have mymap1.img....mymap4.img in the Garmin folder on my microSD card, I'll only be able to turn mymap5.img on or off as a single map.

Huh? I have an OR200 and one of the IMG files I loaded on my microSD card consists of tiles from 4 different maps. They can each be enabled independently just fine. I just powered up and checked to make sure. But I agree that the best approach on the Oregon units is to give each map a separate IMG filename. That way I only create them once and drag the ones needed to the memory card....instead of re-creating the file in Mapsource. That is what I've done when I've added additional maps from this site....made each a separate file.

What's the IMG file called? gmapsupp? And what's your software version? My OR300 is running Software Version 4.10 and GPS software version 4.52, and like I said above, all my multi tile mapsets may be listed on the enable/disable button, but they all are enabled or disabled at once.

Interesting. Probably a "feature" of the newer firmware. Garmin really makes it confusing these days with inconsistent behavior across their models. I have read that the 62 series also behaves like this and won't work correctly if you send a bundle of maps in a single gmapsupp.img container.

And here's another good one. On the Nuvi 3790, if I put a file named gmapsupp.img in the \Garmin folder, it is ignored. If I put it in the \Map folder it works as expected. I think all of the newest nuvi models will be like this as well. They have moved the pre-installed gmapprom.img file to an invisible folder called .System and all user-installed maps must be in the \Map folder.

I guess they don't see any need for compatibility between their handheld and automotive units anymore.

What's the IMG file called? gmapsupp? And what's your software version? My OR300 is running Software Version 4.10 and GPS software version 4.52, and like I said above, all my multi tile mapsets may be listed on the enable/disable button, but they all are enabled or disabled at once.

That file is called gmapsup2.img. That was one of the first ones I created when I got the unit...before I realized the flexibility allowed with the filenames. I have 5 other img files on the memory card. Most have more descriptive names like TopoOverlay.img. I'm on SW ver 4.00 and GPS ver 4.52. I know there are more recent ones, but I'm waiting for most of the new bugs to be caught and fixed. This version has been very stable for my usage.This "bundle" mapset is the only one I'm using that has tiles from multiple maps. If I created it over, I would make them separate. If for no other reason than remembering which maps are in the file.

Send your first map to the gps, then look in its \Garmin folder and find gmapsupp.img. Change the name to something descriptive, like huntingmap.img. Now send the next map and repeat as needed. Your 78s can recognize multiple map files (up to something like a total of 14 maps).

Thanks Boyd! You really are a hero, and that solved a problem which has tormented me for awhile.

I just found this site, and it thought looked like a good one. I loaded the Oregon Topo, and it worked far better than any software I ever bought from Garmin. I'll be here a lot it looks like.

I have carefully read and successfully installed *.img files into MapSource and Garmin GPS. I did both things with my PC using the newbielink:http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/tutorials/how-to-load-.img-files-into-mapsource-with-mapsettoolkit/ [nonactive]. In fact it was almost automatic.

I also have a Mac. I could manage to load these maps into my Garmin GPS using the “equivalent” MapInstall, but I am not able to install them into the BaseCamp on my Mac computer. Does anybody know how to do it? Is it not possible?Thanks and regards,